Problem-Solving and Sleep

October 27th, 2011 by Potato

I find the most dangerous thing is to be close to solving a problem. Sure, not getting anywhere is frustrating and just generally no fun… But it’s when I’m just that close to finishing something or making a breakthrough that I find myself awake at 5 am, just needing a few more minutes to taste victory.

The New Thunderbird

January 7th, 2011 by Potato

The look of Thunderbird has changed a bit in the latest version. One thing I didn’t like too much was the moving of the “reply” buttons to the top of the email reader pane instead of the toolbar at the top of the overall program window, where it lived forever. However, there are two neat new features that I really like: there’s now an “archive” button to quickly move your mail into an archive folder (email takes up so little space compared to today’s harddrives that there’s little sense in ever deleting anything that you might want to get back to), allowing you to get something out of your main inbox without deleting it or doing the ever-so-slightly longer “move to…” process. I find I’m more likely to hit “archive” than I ever was to hit “move to…”.

The other major advancement is a quick key-word checker that looks for words like “attached” in your email. If it sees that and you try to send your message without an attachment, it’ll give you a quick “did you forget to add an attachment?” reminder before final send-off. This is the biggest, epicest, most important advancement to the email client interface since the invention of searching. I can’t believe it’s taken nearly 17 years since the invention of email attachments for someone to come up with this simple, handy checker. Yet, I didn’t come up with it, either, so there we have it.

Whoever developed this deserves an award of some sort, perhaps the Nobel Peace Prize.

“The Peace prize, seriously?”

Yes, imagine all the suffering and wars that could have been averted if people just remembered to include attachments on their emails! Picture it: the North Koreans plan an artillery test, and to set the South Koreans’ minds at ease, they send out a quick email to note the event, with an attached schedule and an invitation pass for an observer… except the attachment isn’t included! The SKs think it’s a deliberate ploy to keep it a secret and launch an attack, so they increase patrols to keep an eye out for suspicious activity. The NKs in their paranoia meanwhile, think that the increased activity to the south is really a prelude to invasion while their artillery is loaded with practice shells, so instead load live ammo into the guns… and it all quickly goes to hell in a hand-basket.

This won’t happen now thanks to the attachment checker in Thunderbird.

Spreading Fear

April 30th, 2009 by Potato

As if the economy and threat of a flu pandemic weren’t enough to inspire fear, the air force decided to do a low-altitude fly-over of New York with a 747 for a photo op.

I’m sure that didn’t trigger a PTSD response in anyone who lives in New York.

Rick Mercer This Week

February 4th, 2009 by Potato

Rick Mercer had a great segment on how Canada works this week, explaining how the coalition was not a treasonous separatist plot, and how exactly it came to be that Michelle Jean had the power to put up the gone fishin’ sign on parliament…

And of course, the Chalk River tritium giveaway days.

Eww… ice cubes

February 17th, 2007 by Potato

I just went to get some ice cubes for my drink, which around here is pretty rare. So, the frost free freezer, with its cycles of temporary heat, had evaporated (sublimated?) almost all the ice out of my ice cube tray. The few, shrunken ice cubes that were left were dirty. Eww, that’s just not right. Ice cubes shouldn’t get getting dirty in the freezer, especially not in one I fully cleaned out in December.

I haven’t had a chance to tell all my stories from the trip out to PEI, and I’m not quite sure I want to. But I do want to mention that it is traditional, perhaps universally so, to send food to mourners. Perhaps because food can be very comforting to our ape-brains, perhaps to spare us from having to cook for ourselves, or perhaps just because practically every get-together/tradition involves food in some way and it would just be wrong to not bring something. Anyhow, there was so much food waiting for us at my grandfather’s house after the visitation. The food was piling up at the front door, with more people stopping by with more as we were eating. Any flat, unsuspecting place that stood still long enough accumulated food. The kitchen table and counters, naturally, were nearly overflowing. A folding table set up in the living room accumulated food along with the coffeetable; some food even found its way on top of the TV. The stove had a few pots on it to keep warm, and then someone else came along and started piling food up between the pots. What I found hilarious though is that the washer and dryer were covered in food.

Food was everywhere, even on the washer and dryer

This of course meant that everyone had to eat in their laps with their good clothes on…